Troy (2004)

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Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:
Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.
— Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Prologue

So long is the shadow of The Iliad over
the history of Western literature that before considering the
merits of Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy it may be helpful to
recall that the story of the Trojan War was not only likely told
by poets long before Homer, certainly after Homer it has been
retold and reworked by numerous poets and writers, including
Virgil, Euripides, Quintus, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

Moral/Spiritual Value

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

This is significant, in part, because one of Troy’s
most obvious departures from the text of Homer is the conspicuous
absence of the immortal members of Homer’s cast of characters — Zeus, Aphrodite, Thetis, and other luminaries of the Greek
pantheon. Offended purists should note that Petersen’s is not the
first recounting of the Trojan War to tell the story from a
mortal point of view; Shakespeare did the same centuries ago.

That’s not to say Troy is remotely in the same class as
Shakespeare, or even that Troilus and Cressida is in the
same class as Shakespeare’s best works. Rather, the point is that
the story of the siege of Troy is one of the seminal myths of
Western civilization, and, like other myths from King Arthur to
Superman, it’s sturdy enough to survive retellings both
mythological and demythologized, poetic and political,
psychological and tactical.

Of course, it’s equally true that no good movie about the
Trojan war has ever actually been made, even at the height of
Hollywood’s sword-and-sandal period. Lots of things can go wrong
in a sword-and-sandal picture, and many of them did in Robert
Wise’s 1953 Helen of Troy, probably the most notable
previous cinematic stab at the tale.

Now, though, we have a Trojan war movie for the
Gladiator generation, with all that that implies for good
and ill. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s mostly for good. Troy
is not great art, but it’s a mostly satisfying action-adventure
adaptation of the classical story.

For one thing, the screenplay by David Benioff (25th
Hour) retains the basic contours of the established story.
That’s not to say important liberties aren’t taken, but on the
whole major plot points are preserved. This applies not just to
the two elements everybody remembers, the Trojan horse and
Achilles’ heel (though Achilles’ heel is not actually from
Homer), but also to such plot points as the falling-out of
Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Agamemnon (Brian Cox) over Achilles’
Trojan comfort woman Briseis (Rose Byrne); a critical sequence in
which one soldier is mistaken for another; and an eerily topical
incident involving the abuse of an enemy soldier’s dead body.

Just as important, key themes and outlooks common to various
retellings from Homer to Shakespeare carry over into the film,
including a tragic view of human nature, war, anger, and revenge.
Like its predecessors, Troy isn’t a story of heroes and
villians, of good triumphing over evil, but of flawed, selfish
men locked in a deadly struggle in which there can be no winners,
only losers. In contrast to Gladiator, which celebrated
revenge and villified its antagonist, Troy sees in the
pursuit of vengeance only tragedy and deceit, and its one great
occasion of nobility is a heartbreaking moment of shared humanity
between sworn enemies.

Unfortunately, the mythic characters themselves are less
successfully realized than plot points and themes. Even when the
same things happen, they happen to less interesting and
noteworthy people.

The adulterous affair of Paris (Orlando Bloom) and Helen
(Diane Kruger) is still the catalyst for war with the cuckolded
Spartan king Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), but the lovers’
relationship here feels about as weighty as a fling on
Friends. (As portrayed by Kruger, Helen is a fine-looking
young woman, though her beauty doesn’t necessarily bring to mind
the launching of a thousand ships; a friend at the screening
suggested that a number closer to 250 would be more on
target.)

Indomitable Achilles still clashes with Agamemnon over
Briseis, but instead of being petulantly offended by the affront
to his pride, Achilles here seems more disgusted at the king’s
dictatorial pettiness.

Worse, the film actually develops a relationship between
Achilles and Briseis, so that in opposing Agamemnon’s desire for
Briseis, Achilles is also protecting Briseis. In fact, Achilles’
conquest of Briseis is given at least as much dramatic weight as
his quarrel with Agamemnon. Briseis is a consecrated virgin of
Apollo ("I think you’ll find the romance one-sided," Achilles
mocks), but she succumbs to Achilles so willingly, after such
token resistance, that it seems the filmmakers gave her vows of
virginity solely for the sake of breaking them.

Troy skews basically negative on religion generally,
and certainly on having any sort of confidence or faith in the
gods or on attempts to discern their will. Those who think they
know the gods’ will, or expect the gods to aid them, are
invariably mistaken. However, Achilles’ confidence that he will
not face divine wrath for desecrating a statue of Apollo
or killing his priests seems to be borne out. Achilles is openly
dismissive of the gods: "The gods envy us — because every
breath might be our last. Everything’s more beautiful that way."
Of course the filmmakers don’t endorse everything Achilles says
or does; but on the other hand no alternate view of the gods is
put forward as a viable alternative.

Despite all this, as a retelling of a classic war tale
Troy does a more than respectable job. Many of the battle
scenes are riveting, especially a dramatic early scene involving
a spectacular stunt and the bravura showdown between Achilles and
Hector (Eric Bana, Hulk), one of
the best duels I’ve ever seen. The drama is engaging; unlike
Gladiator, which expected us to root for the hero,
Troy asks us only to appreciate the characters’ conflicts
and situations. And Peter O’Toole as the Trojan king Priam steals
the entire film with one single scene.

The film’s wobbly center is Brad Pitt, who is poetry in motion
on the battlefield, and can even be intimidating standing all
alone in the plain before the massive gates of Troy, but is
unconvincing in quiet moments and does nothing to make the
gratuitous bedroom scenes less laughable. (Memo to the filmmakers
re. Pitt’s first appearance: It’s called Troy, not
Trois.)

The production design is handsome and persuasive, though less
than overwhelming so soon after the wonders of Peter Jackson’s
Minas Tirith and the like. The art directors get top points,
though, for the Trojan horse itself, the conception of which is
kind of inspired.